Becoming a “Truly Global University”
Internationalization at Brown

David Kennedy ’76,Vice President for International Affairs

The world of higher education is changing under our feet. Across the disciplines, to be at the cutting edge of science and thought is to be in dialog with global peers. The world’s professional and intellectual elites increasingly live in a world without borders and the competition among elite American universities is increasingly played out on a global stage.

To meet these challenges, in February 2008, the Brown Corporation resolved to “ensure that Brown is a truly global university.” I am very pleased to be back at Brown to oversee a broad initiative to deepen and expand the international components of our educational and research endeavors. Since arriving on campus in January, I have been consulting with faculty and students across campus to understand the challenge before us.

What is required: An Open Door Policy

It took a generation for Brown to move from a respected regional college/university to an elite nationally renowned university. Becoming a first rank global university is an equivalent challenge. It will require a new way of thinking across the campus, new reference points, new colleagues, new ideas. In 1899 and 1900, U.S. Secretary of State John Hay, Brown __ articulated America’s “Open Door” policy toward China and the Far East. Now it is our turn. As a University we must open our doors to the world.

Indeed, becoming a prominent global university will be more than the sum of many small initiatives. Ultimately, Brown’s place in the world will rest on the quality and openness of our core: faculty research, teaching and student education. As a result, becoming a first rank global university is all about back to basics. The Plan for Academic Enrichment lays the foundation for ensuring a world class faculty, strengthening the undergraduate curriculum, building a stronger graduate division, and improving our core: faculty research and teaching.

We all know that being well travelled is not the same as being worldly. The most successful global players will be deeply grounded – in place, in knowledge, in experience. Our students will need to dig deep, rooting themselves in a field, a culture, an archive, a place. Then they will be ready for the world. As a result, for Brown, the most important “globalization” will be done in Providence.

We will need to deepen engagement with the world by faculty and students alike. And we will need to focus our energies. In every field today, the leading scholars travel far to work in labs and archives most equipped for their purposes. In this exchange, Brown must continue to be able to put something on the table – programs, faculty, library collections and departments which rank among the best in the world and draw the world’s leading scholars to College Hill.

Brown’s identity

Every major university is struggling with internationalization. At Brown, we will not become globally prominent by doing what everyone else is doing. Brown has been able to punch above its weight on the national scene in part because we made the transition to national university in our own way through the New Curriculum. Forty years on, the move to the global stage offers a parallel opportunity to reassert the University’s unique identity. Brown’s undergraduates will be at the center of our effort, participating in the most advanced research, engaging with the world’s leading scholars, learning about the ideas and people who move the world.

Five objectives — the way forward

The Corporation identified five specific objectives for our internationalization efforts:

Make Brown a model for global undergraduate education while, expanding the depth and breadth of international experiences for our students

Education for global citizenry requires depth as well as breadth, and at their best, international opportunities deepen the academic experience at Brown. Every concentration ought to offer the chance to engage the world, perhaps leading to an “international honors” track in various fields.

More foreign voices in the classroom will help bring the world home. When we teach about the American Civil War, we might ask a professor of American studies from China or the Caribbean to join us in the classroom – how is our war taught where they come from? We will want to help faculty develop curricular materials to open their subjects to global perspectives.

This spring, we have expanded the international service opportunities available through the Swearer Center and multiplied the number of international UTRA experiences. We will want to go much further. Indeed, Brown might aim to offer every student three intensive experiences abroad, devoted to serious language training, to scholarly engagement, and to action, through work or internship.

Not everything needs to be done in four years. Many students take time off, during or after their time at Brown, to explore the world. Internship and research opportunities might be staggered throughout the undergraduate experience, concentrated in one year, or, potentially, form the basis for a new five year international degree option.

Encourage more advanced research that depends on – and contributes to – the international investigation of important questions and problems.

A strong graduate school will be a cornerstone for global excellence. This means expanded fellowship possibilities and aid packages to solidify Brown’s position as a world class doctoral program. To ensure that our graduate students are in dialog with global peers, we will need to overcome barriers of bureaucracy and inertia and funding. A steady inward and outward flow of researcher scholars and fellows will strengthen our research. A cohort of graduate students benefits enormously when a foreign scholar offers to map the discipline’s canonical materials and research agenda from an alternative perspective. Co-supervision by faculty in different countries will soon be the norm for graduate research. We will need to open channels for collaboration by individual students, faculty, departments and programs. At the same time, we must continue to identify new and promising opportunities for collaborative research partnerships with foreign institutions which can help multiply Brown’s research, teaching and internship capabilities.

Strengthen existing centers and program, such as the Watson Institut, to develop world-class centers devoted to important global issues.

The Watson Institute should be the jewel in the crown -- a world resource for understanding how the world is governed, how it might be improved, how so much poverty is sustained in a world of such plenty, how security can be achieved between and within the world’s different cultures and nations. The time is ripe to rethink the Institute’s mission, structure and relationship to the broader University to prepare for a period of growth.

Objective: Support a small number of carefully selected new initiatives in order to carve out a special role for Brown in the ongoing process of teaching and research on global issues.

Boldness counts. While many small initiatives may be lost, a few signature projects and decisions could make an enormous difference. We have the basis for major initiatives in many fields, ranging from global health to the environment, from entrepreneurship and engineering to economic development, media or the performing arts. Our many powerful interdisciplinary initiatives push the envelope in advanced research, engaging researchers and faculty from around the world. In the arts and humanities, there are many possibilities for advanced summer workshops, post-doctoral opportunities and faculty recruitment to bring our programs and departments to global prominence. An interdisciplinary effort in the field of global governance could helping Brown students understand, use and improve the levers of public authority for addressing global issues, whether they are located in global cities, in transnational corporate and financial institutions, or in the worlds of government and diplomacy.

Use Brown’s convening power, focused on the rising generation of the world’s leading scholars, writers, scientists and politicians, to make Brown the place for sustained dialogue among the world’s leading thinkers.

As a great university, Brown brings people from across the world into sustained and serious conversation about ideas. I am particularly excited about the potential for building a new intensive summer institute for young faculty and post-docs from around the world – primarily from third world nations and emerging markets. Offering intensive workshops in various disciplines, such an institute could make Brown a world-renowned location for networking among young faculty from Africa, Latin America and Asia. We could bring our undergraduates face to face with young academic leaders from around the world, offering a unique international experience in Providence. Such an effort could stimulate partnerships for collaborative research and internships to knit Brown’s academic community into the global conversation about ideas. At the same time, Brown could make a unique contribution to faculty development and higher education abroad while show-casing the University for the most significant future leaders in research and teaching.

A ‘truly global university’ is not one size fits all